Despite growing plastic discharge into the environment, researchers have struggled to detect expected increases of marine plastic debris in sea surfaces, sparking discussions about “missing plastics” and final sinks, which are hypothesized to be coastal and deep-sea sediments. While it holds true that the highest concentrations of plastic particles are found in these locations (103-104 particles m-3 in sediments vs. 0.1-1 particles m-3in the water column), our meta-analysis also highlights that in open oceans, microplastic polymer types segregated in the water column according to their density. Lower density polymers, such as polypropylene and polyethylene, dominated sea surface samples (25% and 42%, respectively) but decreased in abundance through the water column (3% and 2% in the deep-sea, respectively), whereas only denser polymers (i.e.polyesters and acrylics) were enriched with depth (5% in surface seawater vs. 77 % in deep-sea locations). Our meta-analysis demonstrates that some of the most abundant and recalcitrant manufactured plastics are more persistent in the sea surface than previously anticipated and that further research is required to determine the ultimate fate of these polymers as current knowledge does not support the deep sea as the final sink for all polymer types.

Add new comment

Filtered HTML

Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

Each email address will be obfuscated in a human readable fashion or, if JavaScript is enabled, replaced with a spam resistent clickable link. Email addresses will get the default web form unless specified. If replacement text (a persons name) is required a webform is also required. Separate each part with the "|" pipe symbol. Replace spaces in names with "_".

Plain text

No HTML tags allowed.

Each email address will be obfuscated in a human readable fashion or, if JavaScript is enabled, replaced with a spam resistent clickable link. Email addresses will get the default web form unless specified. If replacement text (a persons name) is required a webform is also required. Separate each part with the "|" pipe symbol. Replace spaces in names with "_".

CAPTCHA

This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

Share your research in MarXiv: the free research repository for the ocean and marine-climate sciences

Ocean managers, policymakers, and NGOs routinely face barriers to scientific knowledge: they simply can't afford costly subscriptions to traditional academic journals. Studies have found that these financial barriers result in less primary science being used in on-the-ground environmental management plans.

MarXiv offers a way to increase access to pay-walled academic literature in a legal manner. An author who retains copyright on their submitted manuscript, known colloquially as a preprint, may upload the manuscript to MarXiv. Anyone may then download and read the preprint free of charge, legally, forever. No more time wasted begging the author for a copy, and no need to "pirate" the research in a not-so-legal manner.

But MarXiv isn't just for preprints! You can deposit your group's technical reports and Open Access publications, as well. Deposit your report in MarXiv to get a free DOI, a long-term storage solution, and ensure your work is indexed in Google Scholar.